She Treads Softly: The Last Remains

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

The Last Remains

The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths
4/25/23; 368 pages
Mariner Books
Ruth Galloway Series #15

The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths is a highly recommended mystery/procedural and the fifteenth novel in the Ruth Galloway series.

When builders discover a human skeleton, forensic archeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway is called in to examine the bones. It is immediately determined that they are modern and identified as the remains of Emily Pickering, a Cambridge University archaeology student who went missing in 2002 while on a field trip to the Neolithic flint mines in Grimes Graves. Suspicion falls on individuals participating in field trip, including Ruth's friend, Cathbad.

Complicating matters is the threatened closure of the archeology department at the University of North Norfolk where Ruth works. Her relationship with DCI Harry Nelson, with whom she shares a young daughter, is experiencing ongoing complications as he hints that he wants her to move in with him. She has her reasons to be reluctant to take this step.

The Last Remains is well-written and the plot is compelling and interesting. Personally, I would beseech authors to edit out the covid and masking references. Just no. All it did was become a distraction.

Admittedly, this is the first Elly Griffiths novel I have read, so I didn't have all the background and history with the characters that other readers have experienced. They certainly came to life in this fifteenth addition to the series, but I did feel like I was missing some key information and didn't care so much about the relationship as the mystery. Keep that in mind when you read The Last Remains. You can certainly read it as a stand-alone, but I think it would give you an even more satisfying experience if you read the previous novels.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Mariner Books.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.